O'Hare International Airport - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

O'Hare has been referenced by many movies, TV shows and songs

• Christmas Vacation: Clark Griswold says that Santa Claus has been spotted by air traffic controllers at O'Hare.
• Arrests for drugs smuggling in Running Scared, and the start of the film's car chase scene were filmed at O'Hare.
• While the Chicago airport in Airport is named "Lincoln", Joe Patroni phones in that he is approaching Mannheim Road which is the eastern edge of O'Hare.
• O'Hare was frequently referenced in the TV show LAX.
• Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers: Greg Focker departs O'Hare on his way to New York. (However, the scenes were shot at Westchester County Airport for Meet the Parents, and LA/Ontario International Airport was used for Meet the Fockers)
• My Best Friend's Wedding: Julia Roberts' character meets her friend's fiancée at O'Hare.
• Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Steve Martin is trying to get back to O'Hare in the hit comedy.
• Home Alone and Home Alone 2: The McCallisters live in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and are seen departing from O'Hare's Terminal 3 in both movies.
• Home Alone 3: This time, Mrs. Hess arrives in the airport holding the wrong bag, which belongs to the antagonists. Because of that, the antagonists chase her without any notice from her.
• Risky Business: There is a scene where Joel takes his parents to O'Hare; nice highway approach shots and inside the ticketing area.
• Alkaline Trio's track "You're Dead" from the 2001 album From Here to Infirmary includes the line "If assholes could fly, this place would be busier than O'Hare."
• In a classic Looney Tunes cartoon, Bugs Bunny flies on a plane departing from "Oh, Hare! Airport."
• It is part of the title of the Chicago-based band The Academy Is...'s single "LAX to O'Hare". It is also part of the first line of the song, "It was a plane ride from LAX to O'Hare..."
• In the sixth season of the hit CBS show The Amazing Race, eleven teams of two began their race at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, where they boarded flights to either Minneapolis, Minnesota, Boston, Massachusetts, or Baltimore, Maryland and connected to Keflavík, Iceland.
• Many scenes of the airline-themed FOX TV show The Loop presumably take place at O'Hare, as the show is set partly at a large international airport in the Chicago area. However, the airport is never actually identified as O'Hare. Additionally, some exterior scenes are actually shot at LAX.
• In the 1996 Early Edition Episode "The Choice" Gary, Chuck and Marissa must make a choice between preventing the crash of a Boeing 747 taking off from O'Hare with more than 200 people on board, or preventing a little girl (Amanda Bailey) from being hit by a car while riding her bicycle in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park.
• Dave Carroll's song "United Breaks Guitars" is based on an incident that occurred with Carroll's luggage while at O'Hare.